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Logan's Memory & his history with Sabretooth.

I've been wondering about this, and I'm sure it's a complicated subject. When was it first referenced that Logan only had part of his memory? I don't believe it was in Giant-Size X-Men #1? When it was first referenced, how much could he remember?

I just read Wolverine Vol. 2 #10 on Marvel Unlimited because it was the first appearance of Silver Fox, but I was so confused. I'm not sure how much of a history with Sabretooth he's supposed to have at that point. It appears, though, that even at this point Logan has memories of the late 1800s or early 1900s.

Hama gets into that later on, explaining how those particular memories fit with his interactions with those characters. Basically, being a couple of years before Weapon X was really a story means that whole thing was up in the air. At one point Victor begins addressing Logan as "son 'o mine" and although it's not likely what they were really considering as the running background, they don't seem to have a confident alternative.

Okay, so I reposted this thread from the Marvel section because I didn't realize there was a specific X books section. I don't see any function on here to lock threads, so that one's still active, although I mentioned I was moving it. So I'll go ahead and repost this great piece of help that Cthuludrew just posted there.

Originally Posted by Cthulhudrew

That's actually a really good question. His past was always pretty mysterious, going back to his Claremont/Byrne X-Men days, but I don't think there was ever any indication that he had memory losses until his first ongoing series (1988 run). Even, then, I don't think it showed up until after Claremont had left the title. (See below)

So, to this point and in reference to my above note, Wolverine #10, by Claremont ('88 series) was where Silver Fox was first introduced. At this point, Claremont had already worked Sabretooth into Wolverine's backstory in X-Men, so this story was really just fleshing that out. That said, there is absolutely no indication in this storyline that Wolverine is suffering from any kind of memory loss. Instead, he appears to just be flashing back to a time when he lived in the Canadian woods with his native american lover and his (already old) rival Sabretooth killed her on his birthday. This was Claremont fleshing out the ongoing "annual birthday fight" that he had already established as part of the Sabes/Logan history (ie, Creed always shows up and nearly kills Logan on his birthday. Logan's healing factor wasn't yet out of control and Creed was the one foe that Logan truly feared because he was more deadly even than the man who is "the best he is at what he does.")

Side note: This story does seem to hint that Wolverine and Creed are both much older than they seemed to be. Claremont also hinted at this in his early Wolverine ('88) stories by having a picture of Logan with a very young Chang (an employee of Landau, Luckman, and Lake) in Madripoor.

There were hints at possible memory gaps before this: some of the retellings of the Wolverine/Heather and Mac Hudson stories showed him as very feral after his escape from Weapon X, and Barry Windsor-Smith's Weapon X series seemed to show that Logan had a gap in his memory about the experimentation done on him, but nothing quite as extensive- and nothing indicating memories being rewritten that I know of.

I think it was probably Larry Hama who took all of this backstory to its (possibly inevitable?) conclusion of memory tampering. Hama likes to base a lot of his stories on real world military and military intelligence themes (such as CIA mind control experiments and the like). He either introduced the memory rewrites or just fleshed them out more than anyone else; I'd guess the former, but I'm not sure. I know that Claremont also was writing Logan memory loss stories at or around the same time on X-Men, and both men used some of the same (or similar) sequences, such as Logan/Creed in Team X.

In any event, even when the memory tampering storyline was going full bore, it was always only small chunks and pieces here and there, mostly centered around his Team X time that may or may not have been real. Not that it didn't have Logan questioning everything (as one would), but pretty much anything before his Weapon X/Team X days and after his original Hulk appearance can be pretty well relied upon to be real memories.

Hama gets into that later on, explaining how those particular memories fit with his interactions with those characters. Basically, being a couple of years before Weapon X was really a story means that whole thing was up in the air. At one point Victor begins addressing Logan as "son 'o mine" and although it's not likely what they were really considering as the running background, they don't seem to have a confident alternative.

That's a good point, and one I'd forgotten. IIRC, it was Claremont that was going to have Creed actually be Logan's father, but Hama took that unofficial material and used it to make the brief mindf*** story where Logan starts to question if it was true. It turned out not to be (Nick Fury confirmed it for Logan), but that memory was one of Creed's own implanted memories.

I want to say that there was an article about this that I read several years ago online, but I don't recall offhand where. Some brief google searches don't turn up any definitive delvings into the Wolverine/Team X memory implant histories, and now that Slimybug has brought it up, I am starting to wonder why no one has written it up before. Certainly people have made blog posts about far less interesting and documented stories out there, and this one has a definite history. Worthy of a Cronin CBR article at least.

Hama gets into that later on, explaining how those particular memories fit with his interactions with those characters. Basically, being a couple of years before Weapon X was really a story means that whole thing was up in the air. At one point Victor begins addressing Logan as "son 'o mine" and although it's not likely what they were really considering as the running background, they don't seem to have a confident alternative.

As others have said Claremont intended that Sabretooth was Logan's father. But he never addressed that story. Hama Changed it. And yes i believe Claremont made it out that the only thing Logan didnt remember was who put the Adamantium in him. Logan was always just close guarded and has a Mysterious Back ground. Larry Hama introduced Memory implants as a way for writers to do what every they wanted lol. And someone can go in a say nope thats an implant lol. Thats my guess anyway i don't know what Hamas ideas were.